Rockland WTC victim finally laid to rest

Sep. 10, 2006

Written by

THE JOURNAL NEWS

NYACK — Five years after he left his Spring Valley home for what he thought would be an ordinary Tuesday at the insurance company in the World Trade Center where he worked, Robert Joseph Gschaar was laid to rest yesterday in a Rockland cemetery.

"Five years ago when our great nation was attacked, so many lives were turned upside down," said the Rev. David Lothrop as family and friends gathered for a short graveside ceremony at Oakhill Cemetery in Nyack. "But there is nothing terrorists can take away from us as long as we have a love of God."

Gschaar's wife, children, grandchildren and friends remembered him as a person of great integrity, courage and compassion.

The remains of the 55-year-old Spring Valley man were discovered under tons of rubble a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But because he was so badly mutilated, it took several years for investigators to positively identify him.

His widow, Myrta Gschaar, who now lives in Nyack, planned his funeral for the weekend before the fifth anniversary of the attacks so she and her daughters, who live in Ohio, could be together to attend commemorative events at Ground Zero planned for tomorrow.

The family held a memorial service for Gschaar at St. Anthony's Church in Nanuet several weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. But Myrta Gschaar said she had been haunted since by her inability to lay her husband to rest.

The funeral nearly five years to the day after Robert Gschaar called his wife to say that his Aon office on the 92nd floor of the south tower was being evacuated brought both pain and relief for his family.

"It gives us some closure," said Dona Waugh, a family friend from Avon, Conn., who sat with Myrta Gschaar during the long hours of Sept. 11 and the days after waiting for word of Robert Gschaar's fate. "It lets us go on."

But burying Gschaar also brought back the pain of his loss and the terror that gripped the nation during the attacks.

"We can't help but ask why," said the Rev. Carl Johnson, pastor of the New City Gospel Fellowship church. "Why did this happen to Robert? There are no answers."

His family noted that Gschaar was an amateur historian who enjoyed learning about other cultures and world history.

Myrta Gschaar, who was joined by three of her four daughters and most of her eight grandchildren, four of whom were born after Sept. 11, said she hoped the world learned a lesson from the terrorist attacks that claimed so many lives.

"I wish we could learn from the mistakes of Sept. 11," she said. "I wish we could go forward and make this world a better place."